6. What is the orthodox Jewish view of the one whom Jehovah calls “my servant,” as shown in a Jewish footnote thereon?

6 Who is it that Jehovah God here speaks of prophetically as “my servant”? Orthodox Jewish opinion is that it is not an individual. The footnote on this in the book of Isaiah, by Dr. I. W. Slotki, M.A., LITT.D., published by The Soncino Press in 1949, reads: “The servant is the ideal Israel or the faithful remnant. That he is not an individual is the opinion of all Jewish and most modern non-Jewish commentators. ‘Whatever causes may have tended to stimulate the advocacy of this form of interpretation (viz. the Christological), it is important for Christian exegetes to recognize that this path of Jewish exposition is in the main right, and that the path of Christian interpreters down to the time of Rosenmüller (i.e. 1820) has been in the main wrong.’ (Whitehouse).” But is such “path of Jewish exposition” right?

7. After so long a time from Isaiah’s prophecy, what proof can Orthodox and Reform Jews offer of the existence of such an “ideal Israel” among Jewry of today?

7 In considering the above-expressed Jewish opinion as to the identity of “my servant,” we are obliged to ask, Who today or where today is what Dr. Slotki calls “the ideal Israel”? Is it to be found in this generation of natural Jews that has survived the regime of the Nazi dictator Hitler in Europe and Communist oppressions and that yet number some 14,443,925? Do we find the “ideal Israel” or that “servant” of the Most High God in the present-day Republic of Israel, particularly its Jewish population that controls the political government? What Jew, either of the Orthodox religious section or of the Reform religious section, sees in all Jewry or any part of Jewry today “the ideal Israel,” over 2,700 years after the giving of the prophecy of Isaiah? So they have no proof at all that the “servant” of Isaiah’s prophecy is the “ideal Israel” made up of natural Jews.